October 02 2008 show notes


Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.


Thursday 02 October '08 show




  • According to electoral-vote.com, in Alaska, which is a Republican state, Obama is polling higher there than his predecessors such as Kerry and Gore.
  • Tip of the hat to Democratic senators Cantwell, Dorgan, Feingold, Johnson, Landrieu, Nelson (FL), Stabenow, Tester, Wyden who voted against the bailout, plus Independent senator Sanders and Republicans Allard, Barasso, Brownback, Bunning, Cochran, Crapo, DeMint, Dole, Enzi, Inhofe, Roberts, Sessions, Shelby, Vitter, Wicker. Cut some slack to those who voted for it, there was a lot of pressure to do something to deal with a critical situation, and Bush would have vetoed anything that would really have made a difference.
  • Guest: Stephen Spoonamore, Must Be Fed.
    "Mr. Spoonamore is a leading theorist and innovator of systems involved with massive volume data, compression, digital image management and remote electronic monitoring. He has developed solutions for government agencies and the private sector needing high volume cyber solutions since the early 1990s. Mr. Spoonamore also serves as a member of the NEEEC/ANSI task forces to determine standards and needs for E-Authentication of Identity. He has developed security communications standards and contributed to the EPAD All-Hazards National Alert System. Currently systems he has contributed to are functioning on all earth continents, several dozen Earth orbits and one Martian orbit."

    Voting machine security. He's a lifelong member of the GOP. there are few like him now in the "Teddy Roosevelt/Dwight Eisenhower" wing. He liked Roosevelt/Lincoln/Nixon for clean water, etc. He builds very large computer systems, for example the LSS standards protocols for Mastercard. In 1998 he saw a display of the future of voting, it was a disaster. He's given sworn testimony for Ohio 2004. In 2003 he was asked by a commission to develop interface standards for state governments. At a convention in Boston he said there was a disaster in voting. He believes Ohio was stolen. In 2004 they were watching the "Connolly anomaly", Kerry receives 10-30% below exit polls. He helped hunt it down. They pulled many hard drives. The control of the computers was transferred to SmartTech who host some White House, Karl Rove stuff. He said that this needed to have happened for fraud, and others looked and found it. He spoke to his friend Mike Connell, Mike would not talk about it. He's not the hacker, he's the interface/front end guy. Somebody in SmartTech must have done it.

    Brad Friedman and Mark Crispin Miller have done some great work on this. He testified under oath in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell (Ohio Secretary of State) lawsuit that the election in Ohio in 2004. I had probably been hacked and that Mike Connell had indicated that he may have played some role in that because he honestly believed that by helping the guys who turned out to be hackers (he had not been actively involved), he would be saving the lives of unborn children. Connell has not yet testified.

    What can we expect in this election, and what should listeners do to prevent any problems from happening? Advocate for the best possible in voting technology, which is called a paper ballot, as used in Canada, Germany, England and Iraq. Let trusted individuals attend the count. Post each precinct's count at the precinct and transmit the information in a transparent manner. Spoonamore:
    It is cheap, effective and it is the most difficult thing to hack. I who make my living building computer systems, and I'll just emphasize to people, you can not build a secure system to count votes because all secure systems depend on full identify management of who is doing it. I can protect your credit card because I know it's you, and if it's not you, your phone rings asking you if you made the charge. Your identity is linked to the transaction. Voting, by definition, divorces identity from the transaction. You cannot link them legally. So as soon as it becomes anonymous, nobody can check if its been changed. And there are literally hundreds of ways to hack a computer; hundreds. The citizen's technology is a paper ballot. If you don't have the option of using one, I have no idea how to secure what you're doing. I personally demand an absentee ballot and vote on paper.

  • Bumper Music: Give Me Some Truth, John Lennon.
  • Article: How the Credit Crisis Unfolded.
  • Bumper Music: Strangers in the Night, Dave, The Power Hour.
  • Clip:
    "Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care, couldn't care less." Bill O'Reilly.
  • Article: Dutch in red light credit scheme .
  • The deadline to register to vote in most of the country is tomorrow. Verify your registration. Don't mail your absentee ballot, it may not get delivered. Volunteer as a poll worker.
  • Listener Dave emailed Thom to said he received a phone message purporting to be from the local Obama office telling him to be sure to vote on November 11 (rather than November 4).
  • Article: Wyden Statement on Financial Bailout Package.
    "Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued the following statement after voting against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008:

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